Bill Simmons’s HBO Program Is Canceled

After premiering to sky-high expectations this summer, Bill Simmons’s weekly HBO show has been canceled.

HBO announced on Friday that the last episode of the show, “Any Given Wednesday,” would be broadcast next week, just four and a half months after its debut.

When it was announced that Mr. Simmons was getting a talk show, HBO executives were giddy at the prospect of tapping a devoted fan base that had been reading Mr. Simmons’s sports columns for years at ESPN.

But that audience did not follow. “Any Given Wednesday” had poor ratings, often struggling to attract 200,000 viewers, and the Oct. 26 episode, opposite Game 2 of the World Series, delivered a series low of 82,000 viewers.

HBO does not rely on advertising for revenue, and instead depends on popular shows to drive subscriptions. So the show’s failure to become part of the broader cultural conversation was also a damaging blow.

“We loved making that show, but unfortunately it never resonated with audiences like we hoped,” Mr. Simmons said in a statement. “And that’s on me.”

Mr. Simmons has a three-year contract with HBO that will earn him millions, and there are still two years left on his contract. Peter Nelson, an executive vice president for HBO Sports, said the network was “committed” to him. Mr. Simmons still hosts a popular podcast, and he is the chief executive of his new website, The Ringer.

For his part, Mr. Simmons said: “I love being a part of HBO’s family and look forward to innovating with them on other ambitious programming ideas over these next several years — both for the network and for digital.”

But the centerpiece of Mr. Simmons’s relationship with HBO was the weekly talk show.

He signed on with HBO in July 2015, just a few months after ESPN fired him. He claimed his dismissal was a result, in part, of his repeated attacks on the National Football League.

Mr. Simmons has made a sport of criticizing ESPN in the year and a half since he left the network, and signing on with HBO was supposed to be a quick road to a comeback.

The show was intended to blend interviews with segments that were borne out of Mr. Simmons’s primary interests: sports and pop culture.

But there were obstacles from the start. In addition to widespread competition throughout all of television, Mr. Simmons lost one of his main cheerleaders at the network a month before his show debuted: Michael Lombardo, HBO’s programming president, who left in May.

And though there was buzz from the debut, which included an interview with an animated Ben Affleck, early reviews for Mr. Simmons’s show were unkind. Mr. Simmons was not a natural on television, and the show struggled to find its footing in the months since.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: HBO Ends Talk Show for Ex-Star of ESPN. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe